Unless otherwise indicated herein, the materials described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
In computer graphics or displays, scrolling involves a process of moving a cursor through text or other items on display, as well as a process of sliding text or images across a monitor or display. Scrolling is typically done on a computing device by a central processing unit or a graphics card. In a window, icon, menu, and pointing device (WIMP) style graphical user interface, scrolling is done with the help of a scrollbar or using keyboard shortcuts, often the arrow keys. Scrolling is often a key feature in text user interfaces and command line interfaces, though older computer terminals used Up and Down keys or the space bar.
Computer mice may also have a scroll wheel, which moves a cursor, text or images vertically when rolled. Some recent computer mice have scroll balls or tilt wheels which allow for horizontal scrolling of the cursor and of text or images.
Users of electronic documents currently have additional choices in the way of scrolling and navigating through electronic documents. For instance, there are scrolling programs that use a preset graphical user interface (GUI) virtual scrollbar along the side of the displayed documents for navigation purposes.
In the above discussed cases, scrolling can only be performed by the use of scrolling devices or by the guidance of displayed scrolling material. Therefore, it would be advantageous to provide computing devices, coupled to or equipped with touch recognizing devices, with a scrolling functionality that is not subject to these limitations.